Why you should stay away from Thrust::VPS

Thrust::VPS - Damn, that's crappy VPS!

I’ve been a customer with Thrust::VPS (aka Damn::VPS) for well over a year. Despite several minor issues I’ve had with them during this period, I continued my customer relationship with them due to their low prices and high bandwidth cap of 1TB each month. During the last couple of weeks however, I started experiencing a lot of problems on my VPS (Virtual Private Server). When I contacted their tech support to resolve these issues, the answers I received were vague and, in my honest opinion, very unprofessional. In fact, the customer treatment I received from them was appalling to be frank, and it ended up with me terminating the contract I had with them, and signing a contract with Linode instead. Here’s why.

During the last couple of weeks, I started experienced several major issues with the VPS I rented from Thrust::VPS;

Occasionally, I experienced severe I/O performance lag, meaning that when I was editing a file with VIM and issued the command to write to disk – I had to wait up to a minute before the kernel reported back to VIM that the file had been successfully written to the file system.

This I/O lag also presented itself when I was navigating the file system. By issuing a simple ‘ls’ command, I experienced the exact same problem. At most, it took approximately one minute before the information was printed in the terminal.

I also experienced frequent “power failure”. Every couple of days, I found myself unable to log into my VPS. When I logged into the management interface at Thrust::VPS, I discovered that the current status of my VPS was “offline”. In other words, the VPS had shut down without giving me any prior warnings.

After one of these “power failures” had occurred, I started going over the system logs to see if I was able to discover the root cause of the problems. I found no evidence of this problem being caused by the software running on the VPS. If this had been a physical server and not a VPS, I would assume that it had been shut down due to a power failure. However, since it was a VPS and all, my guess was that there existed a problem with the VPS’s host node. Especially since I was experiencing these problems simultaneously.

On February 2nd, the VPS was shut down unexpectedly. I don’t recall the exact amount of times this had occurred prior to that date, but let’s say that this was the second time in less than a week, and the third time counting from a couple of months back. At this point, I was also unable to access the management interface, so turning it back on was impossible. As such, I opened a ticket with Thrust::VPS to let them know what was going on;

Vegard HauglandPosted On: 02 Feb 2012 9:59 AM

Hi,

I’m currently unable to access my VPS. Neither am I able to reach it via your VNC interface to the VPS, or access SolusVM to see its current status.

Please fix this problem ASAP.

Regards, Vegard Haugland

Ten minutes later, I received a reply from one named Arun, who is part their technical support staff;

Arun Posted On: 02 Feb 2012 10:11 AM

Hi, This is to inform you is that your server has been booted up & running fine now,please check this from your end.

Thanks,

When I received the reply from Arun, I was able to access the management interface (SolusVM) again. As Arun reported, the VPS had also been started successfully. The only thing I had to do, was to log into the server via VNC and issue the password to unlock the encrypted file system. Since this was not the first time the VPS had shut down unexpectedly, I asked Arun to give me a technical answer as to why this kept happening;

Vegard HauglandPosted On: 02 Feb 2012 12:57 PM

Hi,

I have regained access to the VPS.

Can you please give me a *technical* answer as to why the VPS keeps shutting down from time to time? From my point of view I experience this issue as a “power failure”, where the system goes down without any prior warnings. This also occurs at random intervals, but usually once every two-three months.

I raised a ticket about this issue in October as I suspected there might a problem with your back-end systems, but I didn’t get a better answer than “I have verified our host node and I could see that the host node is running fine without any issues.”

Could you please look into what the root cause of this problem might be, because it is *very* annoying.

Also, I experience performance problems on my VPS, where the system at random intervals become *incredibly* slow. I suspect that this is caused by your host node suffering from high CPU usage or limited disk I/O. Can you confirm, and if possible, fix the issue?

Regards, Vegard Haugland

To my surprise, Arun now admitted that there was in fact a problem with the host node, but he gave me no technical details as to why this was happening.

Arun

Posted On: 02 Feb 2012 1:26 PM

Hello,

There is a intermittent issue in the host node and this has been solved now,we are monitoring the hostnode from our end and this won’t happen again.

He now reported that the problem had been fixed.. or let me say “fixed”. Four days layer, I updated the ticket with the following;

Vegard Haugland Posted On: 06 Feb 2012 8:02 PM

Hi.

This just happened again. My VPS was shut down without warning.

Didn’t you just tell me that this problem had been fixed? Could you perhaps look into in once more, please?

Regards, Vegard Haugland

The reply I received was:

Arun Posted On: 06 Feb 2012 8:12 PM

Hello,

This should be fine now. I could see that the server and the host node is working fine

Thanks for your understanding.

Still no technical details. Also, I experienced the exact same problem not more than a day after:

Vegard Haugland Posted On: 07 Feb 2012 11:23 AM

Arun,

Your host node is not working okay. My VPS was shut down *again* merely two-three hours ago. As a paying customer, I find this behavior totally unacceptable!

Could you please look into this problem and figure out the root cause instead of telling me that the problem has been solved when it is obviously still an issue?

Regards, Vegard Haugland

Now, I received a reply from another member of their technical support staff named Kiruthika. Now they claimed that the problems I experienced were caused by an abuser on their server, and that suspending the account of this user would also solve my problem.

Kiruthika Posted On: 07 Feb 2012 12:26 PM

Hello,

There was an abuser on the server and we have suspended the suspected vps to get it resolved.

Please verify this from your end.

As you might guess, this did not solve the problem. At this point, I started to grow real tired of the poor excuses, but I tried to respond politely – even though I was still experiencing the aforementioned I/O problems for the n’th day.

Vegard HauglandPosted On: 08 Feb 2012 6:03 AM

Kiruthika,

My VPS is still online, but I still experience *severe* performance problems related to disk I/O. Writing a simple text file containing *1* line to my file system, can on some occasions take as long 1 minute to finish. This delay occurs after I issue the write command from my text editor and up to the point where the kernel tells the text editor that the file has been written.

Regards, Vegard Haugland

The reply I received from Kiruthika sounded quite reassuring, as they are now monitoring the hostnode and my VPS – and apparently, both are working without any issues:

Kiruthika Posted On: 08 Feb 2012 3:24 PM

Hello,

I have monitored the hostnode and your vps and is working fine now without any issue and update us if you are still facing problems.

Thanks.

The only problem here is that my VPS “lost power” merely a couple of days later. Did Thrust::VPS send me a warning despite they’re so-called “monitoring” of my VPS? The answer is a definite NO.

When I sent my reply to Thrust::VPS this time, I tried to make my frustration about this problem even more clearer:

Vegard Haugland Posted On: 11 Feb 2012 9:45 PM

Kiruthika,

The same problem has occured *again*! My VPS was SHUT DOWN without alerting me in advance. According to the logs on my VPS, this happened at Sat Feb 11 17:52:15 CET 2012.

What happened at your host node around this time period?

I find this behavior completely unacceptable. If you are not able to fix this problem permanently, I’m sorry to inform that I’ll have to start looking for an alternative VPS provider..

Regards, Vegard Haugland

But did I receive a detailed and technical answer as to why this kept happening? Nope…

ArunPosted On: 11 Feb 2012 10:35 PM

Hi,

I Will update you shortly regarding for this.

Meanwhile, the VPS shut down an additional time while they were “fixing” the problem…

Vegard Haugland Posted On: 12 Feb 2012 9:12 AM

Arun,

Don’t know if you have started repairing the problem, but my VPS was shut down an additional time tonight, at 04:14 CET.

The other issue I’ve mentioned, where it takes about a minute to read/write a simple text file, has also returned.

Regards, Vegard Haugland

Same standard reply.. They will “check out” the problem and get back to me.

Praveen Posted On: 12 Feb 2012 9:24 AM

Hello,

I will check out this and update you shortly.

Again, there was a problem with the host node, and it has apparently been resolved.

PraveenPosted On: 12 Feb 2012 10:29 AM

Hello,

There was an unfortunate issue with the host node and it has been resolved. We are still monitoring the performance of the host node.

Thanks for your understanding.

But was it resolved? Again, the answer was a resounding no.

This time, I really lost my temper when I wrote the reply.

Vegard Haugland Posted On: 12 Feb 2012 6:13 PM

My VPS has now been shut down AGAIN!

CAN YOU FIX THIS PROBLEM ONCE AND FOR ALL, AND STOP TELLING ME THAT IT HAS BEEN “FIXED” WHEN IT CLEARLY HASN’T!?

I seriously thought you were a professional company that knew how to treat your customers. The way you have handled the problems I’ve been having is clearly evidence of the exact opposite.

Please show that I am wrong by solving this problem once and for all, and give me a technical response as to:

1. How you “fixed” the problem 2. What the cause of the problems was. 3. How you will ensure that this won’t happen again.

I await your response.

Even though I took the time to write this extended reply, they gave me the same standard initial response, where they will look into the problem.

Arun Posted On: 12 Feb 2012 6:50 PM

Hi,

I will update you shortly regarding for this.

This time however, there were no issues with the host machine, or at least that
was what they said.

A few hours later, I received a new reply from Arun. Still without the technical details, but this time they actually dared to suggest that the problems were caused by the software running on my VPS.

Arun Posted On: 12 Feb 2012 8:39 PM

Hi,

I could see that there is no issues on the host machine and uptime of the host machine is 89days. Also I have checked the RAID arrays fine on this node and there is no high amount of traffic. Even we haven’t get any reports on this node from any of the customers.

I suspect the vps was crashed itself. I would suggest you yo check the logs inside of your vps to find the root cause of the issue.

Hope you understand.

This reply made me lose all faith in Thrust::VPS. Since they are not able to give me any technical details as to how they can conclude that the problem is lying on my side, even though I have requested this several times, they are really not worth neither my time nor my money.

As such, I created a new ticket where I asked to terminate my contract with them.

Because of the appalling treatment I have received from your technical support team (ref ticket PXY-125796), I wish to terminate my contract with you with immediate effect.

In addition, I will also encourage everyone I know to stop using your VPS services, or avoid becoming a customer in the first place.

I expect my VPS to be available until the next invoice is due. By that time, you are free to shut my VPS down. However, this will most likely be unnecessary as the VPS is shut down unexpectedly (on an almost daily basis) due to a bug in your back-end systems, as described in ticket PXY-125796, that you are *not* willing to fix.

Have a nice day.

Regards, Vegard Haugland

In retrospect, I have signed a contract with the VPS provider Linode, which I have been recommeded to do for a long time. The service I receive from them is far better, albeit a bit more expensive. As of writing, the extra cost seems to be worth it.

tl;dr;

I was a customer with Thrust::VPS for over a year. I complained about a critical problem concerning their services, which caused my VPS to not function properly. They were not able to fix the problems, and suggested that I have caused them myself. I terminated the contract and went over to Linode.